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mantra render farm service


Guest xionmark

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Guest xionmark

Hi there,

We (Digital Cinema Arts) will be opening a training center in Vancouver, B.C. soon and as part of our teaching environment we'll be providing our students access to a render/simulation farm, queue manager, asset control/version manager, shot tools, etc. and our primary render engine will be mantra, though we'll also have 3Delight and mental ray eventually as well.

So, while in the process of flushing out our business plan, the question has arisen a few times if it makes sense to offer mantra rendering services to commercial/vfx clients as well. We've always focused on education needs but considering the changes in the economy, and the CG biz in overall, maybe it makes sense to explore that market ... we're clearly not sure, thus I'd like to pose the question to the general Houdini community:

If there was a remote rendering service offering mantra, would you see a need for that service in your business model?

Thanks!

Mark

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  • 4 weeks later...

Hi,

I just saw this. This has been on my mind. I do use renderrocket and others for mental ray for maya, but I have been looking for houdini options as well. It seems there are none.

In order for this to be useful, you will need a serious stack of systems, good management software, and some sort of shell/remote desktop service to run simulations so you do not have to deal with uploading of ridiculous caches

Renderrocket has a nice system for maya, all web based. You upload zip files, it will unzip them via the web interface. There is also a proper ftp interface. When the render is complete it will zip the files for you to download. It is pricy though, about USD 4.50/hr on one core for mental ray. They have a good set of machines, most of the time, I get about 150 procs picking up my render when submitted.

Let me know if this has legs,

MD

Hi there,

We (Digital Cinema Arts) will be opening a training center in Vancouver, B.C. soon and as part of our teaching environment we'll be providing our students access to a render/simulation farm, queue manager, asset control/version manager, shot tools, etc. and our primary render engine will be mantra, though we'll also have 3Delight and mental ray eventually as well.

So, while in the process of flushing out our business plan, the question has arisen a few times if it makes sense to offer mantra rendering services to commercial/vfx clients as well. We've always focused on education needs but considering the changes in the economy, and the CG biz in overall, maybe it makes sense to explore that market ... we're clearly not sure, thus I'd like to pose the question to the general Houdini community:

If there was a remote rendering service offering mantra, would you see a need for that service in your business model?

Thanks!

Mark

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Guest xionmark
Renderrocket has a nice system for maya, all web based. You upload zip files, it will unzip them via the web interface. There is also a proper ftp interface. When the render is complete it will zip the files for you to download. It is pricy though, about USD 4.50/hr on one core for mental ray. They have a good set of machines, most of the time, I get about 150 procs picking up my render when submitted.

Let me know if this has legs,

MD

$4.50/hr! Damn, that's pricey.

This will be first and foremost for students, but like I said in the original post, if there's a need, we might open it up to non-edu cleints and expand the resources accordingly.

We'll post an announcement when it's up and running.

Take care,

Mark

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